A New York City teacher got so frustrated with the rowdy students at the back of her classroom that she fantasized out loud about stabbing them.

Investigators heard that Jacqueline Baffoni, 32, kept a knife for slicing fruit in her desk drawer. When her eighth-grade children wouldn't stop talking, Ms Baffoni said: 'I feel like stabbing some of these kids - I have a knife here.'

The teacher had been warned just a day earlier that her probation period might not be extended at the Collaborative Academy of Science Technology and Language Arts on Manhattan's Lower East Side, and she was fired in June 2012.

Exasperation: Jacqueline Baffoni (left) joked she would stab her eight-grade students with a fruit knife

TheNew York Post reported that Ms Baffoni made the comments during last school year. The incident came just after receiving written notification that the school was considering 'discontinuing' her probation.

Another teacher at the school told the Office of the Special Commissioner of Investigation (SCI) that this warning 'might have prompted' Ms Baffoni's outburst.

It is as yet unclear why her probation was under threat - Ms Baffoni had been teaching at the school since 2009, but lost her job before the investigation could take place in mid-October last year.